change of venue

maybe this will keep me on top of it...
http://web.mac.com/petthoma/iWeb/Site/Blog/Blog.html

hmmm

looks like there might be a raise in the minimum wage... and it's coming from the republicans. looks like i voted correctly!!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/washington/28cong.html?ex=1311739200&en=3f113df5c297bc1f&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Happy birthday, Peter!

Happy twenty-third birthday, friend! Hope you live it up! :)

Should English be the US's official language?

Do you think that part of the hostility in the United States concerning immigration-- particularly on our Southern border-- has more to do with xenophobia rather than "security"? Do you think that if we made English our official language, Americans would be less hostile toward immigrants?

I am particularly interested in the discussion surrounding the Spanish-language anthem. Please check out the mp3 audio of this anthem, linked from the following NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/29/washington/29bush.html

Monday is the official day designated for immigrants to walk out of their jobs here in the U.S., as a form of protest. I'm worried many of these immigrants will loose their jobs-- what do you think?

Excited for a great discussion,
Bird

The American/Israel Lobby

Hi, friends!

I think the discussion about the recently published article, "The Israel Lobby", has been pretty interested. I have already discussed NPR's recent story about it (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5353855) with several of you. However, I thought that everyone who posts to Big Block might be interested in discussing it further (and when sober! ;).

If you follow the NPR link above, you can listen for free to NPR's story and link to the original article.

Thoughts?

If we are concerned about freedom of press in China and the Middle East, why not in Europe, too?

omg. Apparently, in Austria and Germany, you can be fined and imprisoned for publicly denying the Holocaust. While I absolutely know the Holocaust occurred, doesn't "free speech" mean that you have a right to say it didn't? (and by "you", I of course mean our consistent contratrian Peter). This fascinates me, friends. Fascinates me. Maybe we only value "free speech" when it means people speaking like us.

Voltaire held, "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". Good thing he is 200 years gone.

Thoughts?


For more info on this, check out the nytimes article about it ("Austrian Court Sentences Holocaust Denier to Prison", NYT, February 20, 2006).

Yahoodlums or Yahootnany?

Friends--

Fascinating. I am not sure what to make of this. Today, Kristof wrote an interesting piece about Yahoo's business operations in China. Yahoo has turned over the names of individuals who have violated the country's strict internet policies and, consequently, these dissidents have been imprisoned (I have cut and pasted Kristof's editorial below, if you are interested).

This is a tough issue; what are Yahoo's responsiblities in this situation? On the one hand, censorship is one of the most heinous human rights violations occurring in the world-- because keeps others from coming to light. In this regard, then, we should be deried Yahoo for appeasing a tyrant and join a boycott of the search engine, as coordinated by http://www.booyahoo.blogspot.com/ .

In contrast, Yahoo provides an important service to a population desperate for ANY contact with the outside world, however limited. In this light, it seems a necessary evil for Yahoo to abide by its host's laws in order to retain the right to provide service to the Chinese.

I am not sure what to make of all of this, but I am confident that you guys will all have plenty o' opinions on all of this. I am interested to read your thoughts.

And I apologize for the pun-terrible title. The word "yahoo" begs faux-clever manipulation.

Thanks in advance for your comments,
Bird

February 19, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
China's Cyberdissidents and the Yahoos at Yahoo
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Suppose that Anne Frank had maintained an e-mail account while in hiding in 1944, and that the Nazis had asked Yahoo for cooperation in tracking her down. It seems, based on Yahoo's behavior in China, that it might have complied.
Granted, China is not remotely Nazi Germany. But when members of Congress pilloried executives of Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Cisco Systems at a hearing about their China operations on Wednesday, there were three important people who couldn't attend. They were Shi Tao, Li Zhi and Jiang Lijun, three Chinese cyberdissidents whom Yahoo helped send to prison for terms of 10 years, 8 years and 4 years, respectively.
Only Mr. Shi, a Chinese journalist, has gotten much attention. But Chinese court documents in each case say that Yahoo handed over information that was used to help convict them. We have no idea how many more dissidents are also in prison because of Yahoo.
It's no wonder that there's an Internet campaign to boycott Yahoo, at www.booyahoo.blogspot.com. But it's a mistake to think of all the American companies as equal sinners, for Google appears to have done nothing wrong at all. Here's my take on the four companies:
Yahoo sold its soul and is a national disgrace. It is still dissembling, and nobody should touch Yahoo until it provides financially for the families of the three men it helped lock up and establishes annual fellowships in their names to bring Web journalists to America on study programs.
Microsoft has also been cowardly, but nothing like Yahoo. Microsoft responded to a Chinese request by recently shutting down the outspoken blog of Michael Anti (who now works for the New York Times Beijing bureau). Microsoft also censors sensitive words in the Chinese version of its blog-hosting software; the blogger Rebecca MacKinnon found that it rejected as "prohibited language" the title "I Love Freedom of Speech, Human Rights and Democracy."
Cisco sells equipment to China that is used to maintain censorship controls, but as far as I can tell similar equipment is widely available, including from Chinese companies like Huawei. Cisco also enthusiastically peddles its equipment to the Chinese police. In short, Cisco in China is a bit sleazy but nothing like Yahoo.
Google strikes me as innocent of wrongdoing. True, Google has offered a censored version of its Chinese search engine, which will turn out the kind of results that the Communist Party would like (and thus will not be slowed down by filters and other impediments that now make it unattractive to Chinese users). But Google also kept its unexpurgated (and thus frustratingly slow) Chinese-language search engine available, so in effect its decision gave Chinese Web users more choices rather than fewer.
Representative Chris Smith, who called the hearing and drew the Anne Frank analogy, has introduced a bill to regulate Internet companies abroad, but that's an overreaction. For, as Mr. Anti noted in his own critique, the legislation would just push out foreign companies and leave Chinese with rigidly censored search engines like Baidu.
That said, American companies shouldn't be abjectly surrendering. Microsoft could publish a list of the political terms that it blocks as "prohibited language." Google could post a list of all the Web sites it blocks. They can push back.
In any case, the tech companies are right about a fundamental truth: the Internet is a force for change in China. There are already 110 million Internet users in China, and 13 million bloggers — hugely outnumbering the 30,000-odd censors.
China's security forces try to filter out criticisms, but they often fail. A study by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School found that China managed to block 90 percent of Web sites about the "Tiananmen massacre," 31 percent of sites about independence movements in Tibet, and 82 percent of sites with a derogatory version of the name of former President Jiang Zemin. In other words, some is stopped but a lot gets through.
So think of the Internet as a Trojan horse that will change China. Yahoo has acted disgracefully, but the bigger picture is that the Internet is taking pluralism to China — and profound change may come sooner rather than later, for unrest is stirring across the country.
It's the blogs that are closed that get attention and the cyberdissidents who are arrested who get headlines, just as in America it's the planes that crash that make the evening news. But millions of Chinese blogs and podcasts are taking off, and they are inflicting on the Communist Party the ancient punishment of "ling chi," usually translated as "death by a thousand cuts."

if Cheney shoots his friends

what do you think he does to his enemies? Something to think about...

Why must they be so loud on a Thursday night?

Had the men on my floor waited until tomorrow night to get roudy, I would be asleep. Since I am awake, I'll take this time to rant a bit.
So, the Presidents State of the Union address was, for me, a flop. As if it weren't obvious that he is sitting lame duck. What amazes me, however (besides this high school graduate's inability to spell), is that midterms are this year. The President spent most of his speech reporting on the war in Iraq, something that the American people already follow religiously everyday anyway. The topics that followed included medicare/cade, foreign oil, education, tax cuts, and spying. These are all things that matter, but the issues the President (failed) to present were middle of the road comments that cited problems and no solutions (although he seems to think medicare/cade is doing well, which is odd, since it is state, not federal, distributed). Bottom line is that I was expecting more of a fired up protaganist and less of volvo salesman. And BTB Bird, did C. Burns miss lead us all in that email?

The Government sticking its nose in sports' business

I feel if Congress ignorant enough to think the American public wants to have federal laws reguating doping on professional sports teams, they should also work on keeping hockey on network TV. FSN and OLN are the only carriers of NHL games this season, which means I can't watch! Senator Bayh best get the Judiciary Committee on recess and make sure network television picks up the post season!

IU/Indiana Politics

and yes, if you are looking at the date stamp, I am at work right now, but feel this time to vent is well allocated, 1. because it involves My Man Swamy, and 2. because otherwise I am reorganizing the files Bertie opened the window to blow all over the place and out of order.
So, as many of you, and by many of you, I mean the 3 of us who actually read this crap (although I am not sure if anyone is reading this anymore), know Indiana is somehow divided over the Holy Frackin' Moses timezone 'problem', which I don't even find a problem, considering we are meant to be on Central time!!! We are 13 hours from New York by car and 3 hours from it by plane (as direct as you can get), we are not meant to be on the same damn timezone. It takes 3 hours to fly from NYC to London and they are 5 hours apart! Chicago, on the other hand, is 3 hours away by car! Also, any idiot looking at a map/globe can see that the Eastern timezone takes up too much of North America already! People think the switch to daylight savings time is going to be too confusing and that is why we shouldn't do it; they are right that it will be too confusing, but it is because people from this state like to argue incoherent, unsubstantiated points until they are blue in the face!
Which brings me to point 2. Dean Subbaswamy not being named Chancellor of IU. WTF mate!? And then, everyone being up in arms about it and taking it upon themselves to fight the fight. The letter the faculty are thinking, if you have read it, is rediculious. I am sure I have had at least as few of the professors who plan on signing the letter, and if I ever turned a letter like this in to one of them, they would laugh at me and fail the assignment. The letter is totally opinionated and unsubstantiated. I agree that Swamy would be a great choice for Chancellor of IUB, but you got to put a little more meat into it than just that if you expect to turn some (acutally, just President Herbert's) heads. They also fault the process by siting how crappy Chancellor Brehm was (well, they didn't put it like that); well maybe that is why they are trying to do a really good job this time! And has anyone talked to Swamy about this? Do we know for sure he was on the list to begin with? Do we know he stayed on the list until the end? Do we know if he wants the job? NO! The IDS and Herald Times make like they know what they are talking about, but none of it is even confirmed. For all we know, Swamy is planning on leaving this University at 5pm today at the end of business. And even if he was passes up for Chancellor, how do we know he wants to fight this, or have people fight it for him? I am sure there is an appeal process to the decission, and wouldn't it make sense that if he did want to appeal the decission, he would take it upon himself to do so, instead of having everyone and their mother decide to take it upon themselves to write an incomplete letter without presence or substance?

Do you know what our friend Peter is telling people?!!!

"my man president bush"- Peter Thomas, July 12 2005

thought, anyone? screams, anyone? strategizes to knock some sense into our delusional friend Peter, anyone?